by Sam Cade
He quickly obliged her on the lime. Next, he took a red Solo cup, filled it with ice, threw in a couple ounces of his best bourbon, filled it with real Coke, swizzled it and approached Waddell.
“Waddell, my old pal, I’ve brought you a friend for the road.”
“What? Got at least another two hours, yet. It’s Friday. What about that Mexican? Is she sleeping?” He cocked a thumb towards Maribelle. “She’s got a whole beer to finish.”
“Taxi.”
“What taxi? Marvin don’t run after six,” said Waddell. “Ah, never mind. Listen, Dude, I need an opinion. Do you think Burt dumped Loni because her star was starting to burn bright while his was fizzling out?”
“I don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about. Now, the drink is on the house.” He pointed to the door. “Now, scram.”
“Ain’t heard that word in a while, scram. You sound like Beaver Cleaver.”
Dude locked the front door after Waddell left, shut down the TVs and snapped off most of the lights.
“Maribel, the bar tab with food and drinks is $41.20.” He placed a hand-written tab in front of her.
She didn’t answer.
Dude tapped her on the arm. “Maribel.” She muttered, “Mmmmm.” He put his hands on her elbows, shook her softly. Her brown eyes opened half mast, sleepy.
“Got the money, Maribel?”
Almost a smile. With her hands on the bar she raised an index finger, pointed at him. “You pay...Mr. Dude.”
He walked around the bar, came up behind her, started massaging her shoulders. It was faint, but it was there, a soft moan. He stepped to her side, her face still resting on her hands. He lifted her dark hair, brought his mouth to her neck. Clean soapy scent, no perfume. He kissed her neck. She tasted like a fresh shower. Dude caressed her back, massaging her muscles with his right hand.
He stepped behind her and began massaging her shoulders. After three minutes he slid his hands around her sides over her shirt, each taking a bra covered breast in hand.
“How’s that, Maribel? Need your boobs played with tonight? They feel nice.”
Dude unbuttoned her flannel shirt slowly, pulled her shirttail up, untucking it from the jeans. Maribel jerked a little. “No.”
“I say yes.” He whispered in her ear. “I’m gonna take you back to the Elvis Suite.”
Dude picked her up like he was carrying a child from a fire. “I gotcha, baby. Big ol piece of candy coming.”
He eased her down to the single bed in his office. That’s when he felt fire scrape across his face. Maribel’s fingernails carved three tunnels of skin out of his cheek. He put his hand to his face, brought his fingers out in front of his eyes. Wet, hot blood.
“You little bitch!”
Dude roughly pulled off her cowboy boots, tossed them across the room. He reached in, unsnapped her jeans, slid down her zipper, and pulled. Maribel’s ass popped up off the bed, her jeans flew to the floor. He ripped a black thong off her body and threw it over his shoulder. Dude put his hand to his cheek again, still bleeding. He wiped his face on the white sheet. Plenty of blood.
“Bitch, there ain’t no free meals.”
Maribel was splayed face down on the bed, naked except for socks, eyes closed, legs immodestly open.
“You’re gonna thank ol’ Dude, girl. Bout to spoil you rotten.”
Dude unsnapped his pants. Slid his zipper down.
15
IT WAS FIFTEEN MINUTES UNTIL ELEVEN P.M. WHEN EILEEN started the rental car. She kept the lights off and punched the heater fan up to High. Even with a wool coat and gloves she was shivering. She was getting restless. Too much time watching. Patience, girl. Her pastor constantly reminded his flock of this virtue.
She was positioned perfectly in the shadows of a closed commercial business next door to the Rusty Anchor. From her vantage point she had a clear view of people leaving from the front and back doors. As of ten minutes ago, three men had left in an SUV, one Hispanic lady pulled off in a Ford Taurus, and an older white man wobbled out the door to a pickup parked near the road.
That left one woman in the building. And Dude Codger.
BROYLE, JAVY, AND LUIS ARRIVED BACK FROM FLORIDA at 12:40 a.m. Saturday morning. “I’m whipped, fellows,” said Broyle. They were staying in the Oak Haven rental cottages on Great Bay Road in Black Point. “Let’s see if we can get seven hours of sleep, grab breakfast and head back to Texas.”
Broyle had his own cottage next to Javy and Luis. “Y'all go kiss those ladies hello. And keep the racket down.”
A small light was on over the kitchen sink in Luis’s and Javy’s cabin. Place was dead silent. Breakfast bacon scent still in the air. Luis went straight to his bedroom. Without any light he went to the bed, felt a body under the covers, bent down and kissed Isabel on the neck.
“I’m home, baby. Safe and sound.”
“Come to bed, Luis.” Luis could smell the beer as she spoke.
“Gonna grab a shower.”
He took his shirt off, then plopped on the side of the bed to remove his shoes and socks.
A rap on the door. “Luis, tell Maribel to get in her bedroom,” said Javy.
Javy found an empty room when he looked for his wife. Bed made up. He figured she probably fell asleep talking to her mother. They were close, could talk all night sometimes.
“What?” Luis opened the door, naked belly hanging over his belt.
“Maribel’s in here, right?” said Javy. Luis went and turned on a bedside lamp. Maybe he didn’t see her. Just Isabel in the bed. Luis hustled to look at Javy’s room. He saw the made-up bed. Javy was right with him. “Where is she?”
Luis rushed to his room, rustled Isabel’s neck. “Isabel, where’s Maribel? Isabel, wake up.” Luis prodded her again. She sat up. “What? Come to bed, Luis.”
“Maribel’s gone. What happened?”
Isabel was in an alcohol deepened sleep. She swallowed, closed her eyes, scrunched her face, then opened her bleary eyes again. “Now, what did you say?”
“Maribel isn’t here. Where is she? What’s going on?” said Javy.
“We go eat, drink beer. I got sleepy, come home.”
“What time did you get here?” asked Luis.
Isabel closed her eyes again. Thinking. “Ummmm...maybe 10:30.”
Luis looked at the clock on the dresser. Approaching one in the morning.
“Where did you eat?”
“The bar. With Dude. We made him pay. Maribel say she’s getting a taxi.”
“Javy, go get Broyle while I get dressed.”
BROYLE TOOK A RIGHT ONTO U.S. 98 at the red light next to the gas station taco joint. Destination two miles. The road was straight, dark, empty.
Broyle jumped the truck up to ninety, high beams on. Quiet. Minds full of bad thoughts.
He cut the truck lights before he pulled off the road at the bar. He didn’t want sweeping headlights announcing visitors. Only a dim hint of light from the building. He pointed to the back of the lot at the Camry. “Probably Dude’s car.”
A couple of decades old, blue, scuffed Chevy pickup sat in a dark part of the parking lot on the front side of the building. Three ladders were cinched tight on a ladder rack. No signage on the truck. Broyle saw that truck in the same spot every time he’d been to the Rusty Anchor but never thought of it as a permanent fixture. Didn’t see anybody in the truck. Probably hadn’t run for months.
Broyle peeked through the front door glass and saw a low intensity light that shone down on neat rows of hard liquor bottles at the backside of the bar. TVs off. No movement. Didn’t see anyone.
Javy and Luis made their way around the left side of the building. Each peeked through a different window. They moved faster than Broyle. Saw nothing.
A FLASH OF MOVEMENT IN THE ANCHOR’S parking lot roused Eileen. A dark pickup pulled in running with no lights. She watched three men pop out and start circling the building, looking in windows. Instinctively her hand went to the small bo
re .22 in her coat pocket. Her husband, Ernie, bought it with no ID from a shrimper in Niceville.
THERE WERE TWO DOORS on the back of the building, one directly into the kitchen and storage area, the other to Dude’s office. No low windows, only a small ten-inch transom window up high over the office door. Light coming through.
Luis and Javy put their ears to the office door. They heard something. A voice muffled by the wood but talking excitedly to someone.
“Luis, cup your hands, lift me up for a look,” whispered Javy. Luis nodded. He intertwined his hands into a locked vice grip, bent down so Javy could get his right foot into Luis’ purchase point.
“Now,” said Javy. He pushed off the ground with his left leg, Luis grunted, Javy propelled upwards. He got his fingertips onto the ledge of the small window and pulled upwards, relieving pressure on Luis.
Javy saw his wife. Maribel was face down on a bed.
Naked.
16
1:15. SATURDAY MORNING. Still air. Cloud cover in the darkness, no glint of the moon, not a single spike of starlight. Delroy Vaughn was in a deep warm sleep in the bow v-berth of his ramshackle thirty-six-foot shrimper.
His cell phone blurted a ring the same moment it buzzed next to his left temple. Anger replaced his sweet dream of Tiffany Whitworth on the beach in the tenth grade. String bikini and the body of a twenty-five-year old woman.
“It’s too fuckin’ late for this nonsense whoever this is.” Delroy answered with his eyes closed.
“It’s Dude, you slack-ass motherfucker.”
Dude Codger was stark naked in his office with his dick hanging slack, burning as red as Santa’s cheeks. He was amped. King Dude.
“You oughta see this little senorita right here on the bed, Delroy. And right now, my damn dick has a severe case of third-degree Indian sunburn. I just dismounted that senorita’s ass. I rode it hard, twice. I’ll probably have water blisters on my unit by sunup. But damn worth it, I swear to you.” Dude laughed.
“Save it, Dude.”
“I’ve got the Polaroid in my hand. Little Chiquita is buck ass naked. Face down, pretty little brown ass up. I’m gonna pose her all up, front and back, get some good scrapbook Hall of Shame shots. She has tattoo above her ass. If I could read Spanish, I’d tell you what it meant. Probably operating instructions.” Dude laughed at his own joke. ‘Ride Me White Boy.’ Guess what? I did.”
“I told you, Dude, I’m sick of hearing this kind of nonsense. Get your ass home to Ella and the kids.” Delroy hung up while Dude was in mid-sentence.
Out of nowhere the back door boomed with thundering knocks. Boom, boom, boom. Dude heard voices yelling in Spanish. Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Wood began to splinter down low. Somebody kicking.
The door exploded open.
Dude grabbed his pants from the floor but had no time to put them on. Luis bull-rushed him, tackling him hard. The Spanish cursing was nonstop.
Javy went to Maribel, “Baby, baby, baby.” She was face down, appeared unconscious. Her legs were slightly spread. Spunk seeped from her bottom.
Broyle ran as fast as he could to the back of the building. He looked through the splintered wood. “What the hell!”
Luis was beating Dude about the face and trunk. Blood dripped off his knuckles from Dude’s ripped face. Luis beat him unconscious in thirty-five seconds. He’d done it before as a young man in the cartel. He jumped up to check on his daughter.
Luis squeezed Javy away from Maribel. He hugged her, tears on his cheeks. Javy went to the floor, squatted, then bent with his hands cinched behind his neck. He let go a deep animal howl as he slammed his fists to the floor.
Maribel spoke as Luis hugged her. “Papa, I’m sorry.” Voice groggy.
“No, no, no, baby, will be okay. Papa here, Javy here, everything fine. Love you, little girl.”
“Help her dress, Javy,” Broyle said. “Let’s take this prick, make him pay.”
Broyle found a towel in the bathroom, wet it, wiped blood from Dude’s face. “Wash your hands Luis, then let’s dress this piece of garbage.”
They struggled to get jeans and a shirt onto Dude. Luis grabbed duct tape from a shelf and wrapped his wrists and ankles then ran a strip across his mouth.
Broyle hustled out to the front edge of the parking lot, drove his truck to the back door, left it running, heat blowing on high.
Maribel was dressed, sitting on the bed, sobbing, with a foggy look in her eyes. Javy spoke to her sweetly. “Love you baby, everything okay, everything good, never leave you like that again, love you, baby.”
Javy helped Maribel into the truck, climbed in behind her and held her with both arms.
Broyle and Luis rolled Dude into bed sheets until no flesh was visible.
“I’m gonna spray bleach on the floor. Luis, you go out front and ransack the bar, smash the TVs, tear open the register.”
With the bar and office ripped apart like a burglary and vandalism, Broyle pulled Dude’s Camry to the door and popped the trunk. Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” from a Pensacola rock station blasted from the speakers. The early morning was bitterly cold.
Broyle and Luis lifted Dude at the head and feet and rushed him out to the Camry. In he went.
EILEEN LEANED FORWARD ON THE STEERING WHEEL, fixated on the action. Two men were kicking and beating on a door. Not a social call. Seven minutes later she recognized one of the Hispanic women that she saw in the bar. She was ushered into the rear seat of the pickup. A man jumped in next to her and closed the door.
But what’s this? After eight more minutes, two men came out carrying each end of a rug. A heavy rug, sagging in the middle. They threw it in the trunk of the Camry like a sack of concrete. Slammed the lid. The truck and car pulled out on U.S. 98, headed south.
A catbird smile creased Eileen’s face. Easiest ten grand I ever made.
“I’M GONNA DRIVE THE CAMRY DOWN TO THAT BOAT RAMP at that little park way down Great Bay Road, the one out in the middle of nowhere and run this sucker right into the water. Y’all follow me at a distance, keep an eye on my tail lights,” said Broyle.
Two beady eyes, slouched down low, peeked through a steering wheel in an old, blue, Chevy painter’s truck parked in the shadows on the front side of the parking lot. The eyes watched the vehicles leave. Even as drunk as Waddell was, he could see that the pale faced, balding white man driving the Camry wasn’t Dude.
With his brain bobbing in a sea of alcohol, Waddell Skipworth lit a smoke.
Tried to think it through.
17
Monday, February 13, 2017
Fernandina Beach, Florida
CREDE HENDRICKSON STEPPED OUTSIDE onto his balcony overlooking the Atlantic from a warm kitchen that smelled homey with a fragrance of coffee beans and hot raisins floating in a creamy cinnamon cloud. Steam rose from the coffee cup in his hand.
The blustery morning broke with a worrisome eastern red sky carrying temperatures too cold for Florida. He was surprised at the intensity of the wind. Bunched blue-black clouds packing moisture raced with the westerly wind over the angry, white capped Atlantic.
The air smelled like rain. Clean, but with a stern warning of caution.
Wanda stepped out. “Better get with it, Crede, if you’re driving almost to Mississippi.”
Crede watched the gusts rip up the ocean.
“Looking at these clouds, I don’t know, Wanda. Heavier weather coming behind this from the Gulf. I’ve gotten soft sitting behind the desk over the years.”
“Oh, come on. You used to drive in snow across the Rockies at midnight.”
“Yeah but used to ain’t now.”
“Yeah, but nothing. You need to get it going, get a decision made. We need these trucks to open some west coast expansion. New tractors will turn some heads, might bring some interest from drivers who aren’t pill heads.”
“I better get to the office. I need to put in a few hours before hitting the highway.”
He gave hi
s wife a peck on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.”
Crede Hendrickson started his trucking outfit with a high school diploma and a gut full of gumption. By age nineteen, he was a sturdy country boy smart enough to know he didn’t need a boss to tell him how to throw stuff on a trailer and drive it someplace. All he needed was a few bucks to get his own truck. Every bank in town turned him down on a truck loan but told him to come back in a few years with a down payment and company financials.
Then his girlfriend’s daddy stepped up. Dr. Jeryl Knight. The dentist had a small concern for the boy having no college education, but he read Crede as a winner. So, he financed the first truck. Ten months later he financed two more. Crede’s outfit was firing all cylinders.
Forty-five years blew past like campfire smoke in a breeze. Today the dentist’s only daughter lives in a four-million-dollar custom Atlantic oceanfront home in Amelia Island Plantation and Crede is about to buy twenty-five-million-dollars-worth of state-of-the-art tractors for his trucking line. To make his final choice, he would personally take a tractor on a road trip to evaluate performance.
His dispatcher lined up a shipment of heavy steel airplane engine parts to be picked up in Jacksonville and delivered to Black Point, Alabama, in the southwest portion of the state.
IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT when Crede rolled into the Highway 98 commercial corridor in Black Point. Modern high-performance street lighting attempted to brighten the dismal rain-blown night. The four-lane was dead.
He drove by the usual suspects. Banks, McDonalds, Shell, Ruby Tuesday, Walgreens, Hardees, CVS, Waffle House and all their cousins. He planned to sleep in the truck tonight at the plant located five miles south of town.
Deep blackness met him after he passed the convenience store near the high school. He was past the median lights zone. It was like walking into a Blue Ridge mountain cave at one in the morning. Four lanes edged into two. Crede felt hemmed in, almost claustrophobic after leaving the commercial sector.